


lean into the light and hold me

by theseerasures



Category: Frozen (Disney Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:55:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23202835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theseerasures/pseuds/theseerasures
Summary: He’s learned a lot through three years and two nail-biting field trips, but this might be one of the first things he ever figured out: Anna’s anxieties have anxieties. He’s not going to be able to stop the rushing torrent of her thoughts head-on, so the best he can do is try to trim down on some of the tributaries, cut straight to the heart of the issue.Post-Frozen II: Anna comes down with a case of Nerves the night before her coronation. Luckily, Kristoff is there to braid her hair.
Relationships: Anna/Kristoff (Disney)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Spiritual successor to [Chapter 8](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1323370/chapters/2814991) of "measure your life."
> 
> Now with author's commentary in second chapter! Please view as Entire Work to get endnotes to work.

[1]The window is open again.

Kristoff sighs dramatically as he walks through the office door. “Seriously? It’s three in the morning.”

Anna’s head darts up. For some reason she has a pen clenched between her teeth.[2] “Kristoff!” she says, the pen clattering back onto her desk, “Hi. Sorry. Did I wake you? Again?”

“Youdidn’t _wake_ me,” he clarifies as he slides the window shut, “I did that on my own. But I would have gone right back to sleep if I hadn’t looked to the side and thought, _hey, someone’s missing—who could it be? It can’t be Anna_ _. I mean, she’s already tried to get up twice tonight_ , _doing it again would just be—”_

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Anna interrupts, eyes roaming over the papers strewn all across the room, “I just—I wanted to make absolutely sure that I know my lines.”

“You don’t have any lines tomorrow,” Kristoff points out, “The priest guy does all the talking, and then we cheer your name. You don’t say anything during the ceremony.”

“Well, that’s what’s tripping me up!” Anna cries, thrusting a fistful of itinerary at his face, “I mean, all _I_ have are these uber-complicated directions about where to walk and stand. If I said something I’d probably remember how to do that stuff better.”[3]

“I’ll make a note of that the next time you’re crowned Queen of Arendelle.” He plants himself down on her chair. Looks over at Anna, bent over a file cabinet now. Little hair strands are starting to break free from her loose bun. The collar of his nightshirt—comically oversized on her body—slips down a little as she straightens up, revealing a trail of freckles running down her shoulder, still darkened from the recent summer sun.

He loves her like this.

Anna frowns at him, breaking his reverie. “Have you seen my—”

Kristoff’s holding out her broach before she even finishes that sentence, but whips it out of the way again when she reaches for it. “ _Hold onto it for me so I don’t lose it,_ don’t _give it back to me until tomorrow, even if I ask, because I’ll lose it or drop it into the fjord—_ your words, not mine.”

“Aw, come on,” she pouts, “Past-me’s no fun at all.”

“Past-you wasn’t three cups past her coffee-per-day limit,” Kristoff replies, holding fast, “I’m gonna defer to her.”

The manic look in Anna’s eyes slips, just a little. “Sorry. I know I’m—I know I’m acting like a crazy person right now.[4] I’m just…”

She looks away, chewing generously on her bottom lip. Kristoff tangles his fingers with hers, gives them a little bounce, before pointedly moving away and reseating himself on the sofa. Forget Anna—the paper tornado on the desk is making _his_ head spin. “You’re nervous.”

“Well, _duh_.” Anna blows an errant wisp of hair out of her mouth before joining him on the couch—but not before absently throwing the window open again.

Kristoff swallows another sigh as gooseflesh starts erupting all over his bare chest. “About anything in particular?” he asks, motioning for her to turn to the side.

“You mean besides literally everything?” she scoffs, but does what he asks, shifting so her back is facing him. “I still hate my shoes. What if I trip? And my cape—what if it gets caught on something as I’m walking and I break my neck? What if—”

“I do mean besides literally everything,” he interrupts her firmly. He’s learned a lot through three years and two nail-biting field trips, but this might be one of the first things he ever figured out: Anna’s anxieties have anxieties. He’s not going to be able to stop the rushing torrent of her thoughts head-on, so the best he can do is try to trim down on some of the tributaries, cut straight to the heart of the issue.

Somewhere in the castle, Elsa’s probably giving him a Look. _Rivers aren’t hedges, Kristoff. They don’t have hearts either._ [5]

Whatever. He starts undoing Anna’s bun; her hair’s the worst of both worlds right now—caught somewhere between “everyday bed-hair” and “emergency all-nighter.”

Anna makes an exasperated noise. “Then I don’t know! Maybe? I don’t know. It just feels like…I don’t want it to end, you know?”

His fingers start combing through the tangles. “It?”

“Yeah, it. I don’t know what it is, but it’s…ending.”

Kristoff follows her gaze as it flickers toward the open window. Living in the castle for so long means he’s come up against every possible discussion a guy can have about doors, right down to the one about whether it changes Everything that a door is just kinda ajar instead of wide open ( _it doesn’t_ , is his steadfast stance), but this window thing—that’s new. New since they came back from the Forest. New since Elsa’s abdication.

He thinks he’s starting to understand. “Did I ever tell you why I went back to ice harvesting after the Trolls took me in?”

“No? I always kind of figured it was because nothing could keep your love for ice down.” She fidgets slightly. “Is this a distract-Anna-story or a help-Anna-story? Because—”

“It’s both. And—yeah, kinda, but there’s more to it than that. Right after they adopted me, I didn’t leave the Valley for a few years—not until I was…maybe sixteen? Bulda pulled me aside one day, and she told me that she loves me, they all love me, but I should go.”

Anna draws in a sharp breath. “Just like that?”

“That’s pretty much what I thought, too. She must have seen the look on my face, because she hugged me right away and told me that obviously they weren’t kicking me out, it was just…well, there are things about being human that they’ll never be able to teach me. And she said, for them…”

He pauses to think hard, here; this feels like the important part. “For them, they don’t really do anything except stay in the same place forever. They don’t really even get what it means to say _goodbye_ , but they want to learn that, with me. For me. She said that I should leave, because they want to know how it feels to miss me. How it feels to want to talk to me, but then to remember that I’m not around. And then—how it feels when I come back. How happy they’d feel, when that happens.”[6]

The tangles in her hair are gone; he starts working on the left braid.

“I’m not sure I understand,” Anna says, passing him the hair ties around her wrist,[7] “Or maybe—I _do_ get it, but I don’t get why you’re telling me now? I told Elsa she should stay in the Forest. That whole hurry-up-and-go-hurry-up-and-come-back thing, I get it.”

“That’s not what I’m trying to say. What I’m trying to say is—you’re not a troll. You’re like me.”[8]

“Um.” He has to stop her head from craning around to stare at him so the braid doesn’t get messed up. “Yeah. I know that, Kristoff.”

“No, I mean—” So much for lordly wisdom. It’s fine. He’ll try again. “Why do you keep opening the windows?”

Anna shrugs. “I dunno. ‘Cause I get warm? And a breeze is nice?”

“Sure,” he agrees easily. Waits.

After a few seconds of silence she sighs. “I guess I’m…waiting. Just in case.”

In case anyone comes flying home.[9] The first time Elsa had done that—just got Gale to carry her right through—he’d fallen right off this very couch. “Elsa’s already here,” he reminds her, “She got here this morning for the coronation. She even came in on a non-magical horse, like a normal person.”

“I know that!” He can exactly picture the stubborn, irritated face she’s making. “I was there. But I…I don’t know. It’s like a habit now. What if it’s not Elsa? Gale can bring anyone in here. What if Bruni just misses me and wants to say hi? What if something happens at the Ice Palace with the snowgies? What if the Northuldra get in trouble? What if someone—anyone—needs me? Arendelle needs to be ready. It needs to be better than it was before—it has to be home for _everyone,_ so I…“

“So you’ll do that?” Kristoff asks as finishes with the left braid and moves onto the right, “Whoever comes? Whatever happens? You’ll take them in?”

“Of course I will,” Anna replies, “That’s what being Queen should mean, right? And I’m part of the bridge, so—that’s gotta be included in the package.”

Her eye is on the whole world, through the window.[10] “I love that about you,” he says, simply.

Anna’s flush goes all the way past her shoulders. “Kristoff—”

“But you don’t have to be stuck here to do all that, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean—you don’t have to wait here all the time keeping the windows open. You don’t have to wait for someone to come to _you_. You should get to go out there! Just because you’ll be crowned Queen tomorrow, it doesn’t mean that you’ll be…”

Anna shivers suddenly. She doesn’t say anything.

“It doesn’t mean that you’ll be trapped here,” he finishes gently. “And it doesn’t mean you have to do all this by yourself, either.”

She stays still and silent for so long that he’s done with the right braid and is nervously scouting for something else to do—maybe start over, try an updo? It’s not like any of this is staying in place once he coaxes her back to bed anyway—by the time she finally turns back around to hold his hand.[11] “I guess I _have_ been thinking about it like that. All depressing, and—” Her face screws up. “I haven’t exactly had the best role models, when it comes to…monarch-ing.”

He just nods, lets her trace her finger idly across his palm.

“Mother and Father…well, you know. The only time I really remember them setting foot outside the castle was the time they didn’t come back. And Elsa was—Elsa was _so_ much better after the Thaw, but then she just…left.”

“She didn’t _just_ leave,” she amends immediately, “She talked to the council and drew up all the paperwork and asked me if I was sure seventy times and told me she believed in me like five hundred times, but…she _did_ leave. And she should have! She’s allowed.”

“She is,” Kristoff agrees. He lifts her fingers up to kiss them. “But that doesn’t mean all you can do is stay.”

Anna blows out a shuddery breath, and then throws her arms around him. “I love you. You know that, right?”

“I have an inkling, yeah,” Kristoff replies, bending down.

Kissing Anna always reminds him of the feeling you get after a long, hard climb; lying flat in the snow, breathless, watching the stars appear in the endless sky above you, thinking _wow_.

Three years on, he’s still kinda stuck on _wow_.[12]

“Kristoff,” Anna moans into his mouth after a few minutes, “Kristoff, we have to close the window.”

“What?” he mutters, distracted by the feel of her against him, the thrum of her heartbeat, the rush of his own blood…

“Someone might _see_ ,” Anna’s insisting even as he kisses down her jawline.

“We’re three stories up.”

“Gale might see,” she says weakly, not at all trying to move away.

“Gale doesn’t have _eyes_.”[13]

“She can still—” She lets out a shaky gasp as Kristoff pulls the collar of her shirt ( _his_ shirt) further down and starts making his way down her sternum. “ _Kristoff_. Let me at least—the curtains—”

“I have a better idea,” he announces, lifting her up as he stands. She lets out a surprised squeal even as her legs automatically wrap around his torso for better leverage. “Let’s finish this in the privacy of our own room, _Your Majesty_.”

Anna doesn’t even try to muffle her giddy laughter as it echoes off the walls.


	2. Endnotes

1Title taken from "Where Do We Go From Here," from the _Amelie_ musical. It's funny--I call this a spiritual successor, because it was written after the original, but if we take the timeline of the movies at its word then technically this fic would take place before the original, since the original was about the Kristanna wedding. Time (and the emotional idiocy of fictional characters) makes fools of us all, I suppose. I think the meta-timey-wimey-ness works out, though. The original fic always carried this utopian valence for me, even as I was writing it: sure, it was grounded in a real-life event, but there's an etherealness to how intuitive and in-sync Kristoff and Anna were that would only occur in the sleepy haze of the very early morning, or in an imaginary future. Here's what Anna and Kristoff might look like, as ideal adults about to get married. This sequel/prequel is meant to respond by exploring Anna and Kristoff, as _real_ adults, also about to get married, but having to handle the increasing complexity that comes with being grown up. The title's meant to reflect that added layer of uncertainty, because the song it comes out of is all about not really knowing what will happen next. But at the same time: they're ready for it. They'll do this together.[return to text]

2I introduced the idea that Kristoff can never keep his hands idle in the original fic, but I think Anna--particularly when she's anxious--is also a non-stop fidgeter in parallel to him. For her, it's not so much finding something constructive so much as picking things up for no reason, playing with them, and then not wanting to set them down again, because she might need them for later. Hence: the pen, and why she made Kristoff Broach Captain. I always envisioned her face covered in ink splatters for this whole fic, but that little detail never made it in.[return to text]

3This little gag popped into my head as I was writing, but it ended up meshing pretty well with the fic's overall idea, which is that Anna feels least in control right when she's about to ascend to a position of absolute control. It's the same issue of individual agency vs. being a sovereign monarch that I touched on with Elsa in "with me guiding what i do." Your sense of self is supposed to dissolve into the state as soon as you're crowned, at which point your life is (presumably) just pantomiming tradition--and that's ALL a coronation is. For Anna here it's compounded by everything she's built up in her own head about being ~a side of the Bridge~, and every high adventure story she's read while cooped up and alone, so it really does feel like her life is ending: in the morning Princess Anna Who Heroically Climbs Mountains and Swings Swords has to make way for Anna the Good Queen, the source of stability and order while her sister cavorts with spirits and bellows into the night. Of course not getting to say anything at what's supposed to be her own party would spike her hair--it's a portent of what she thinks the rest of her life will look like.[return to text]

4Part of my project of making Anna's dialogue less of a Quirkstravaganza is to cut down on my em dashes--bet you can't tell from these commentaries--oops, there I go again--right? If I do end up using them, I wanted them to feel purposeful, which means knowing what a character was ORIGINALLY going to say before they altered course instead of having a break just for the sake of it. Here, Anna was originally going to say "I know I'm BEING crazy," but she checks herself at the last second, which I feel like matters for Anna's becoming, and her learning not to belittle herself and her hangups. (She still apologizes twice for basically no reason. It's a work in progress.) Not sure why I cut her off before she says the word "being," though, since THAT would have made the change clearer to the reader.[return to text]

5In the spirit of full transparency, I have to admit that this Geneva-Convention-defying metaphor pretty much sprang fully-formed out of my head without a shred of self-awareness one day, and only when I was writing it down did I realize the true travesty of it. I was still too lazy to fix it, though, so I just wrote an in-universe dig at it instead with all the contemptibility of a moronic high school teacher poking fun at his own incompetence in the school play. In all honesty, Elsa is also probably terrible at metaphors (somehow in a different way than Anna's and Kristoff's terribleness) and has no leg to stand on. I DO stand by her making a judge-y face at Kristoff for his, despite the hypocrisy, because I like to imagine their relationship evolving into something...kind of salty after a few years. Not in a particularly mean-spirited way; more in the sense that Elsa still has hangups about hurting people but knows by this point that Kristoff can take what she dishes out (when she uses her words, at least) and will snipe back, and Kristoff still has a chip on his shoulder about how to act in ~civilized society~ but knows that Elsa doesn't REALLY care and is just as feral on the inside, so they're just...more dickish and judgmental with each other than they would be with Anna, because the stakes feel lower. They're basically each other's stinky bastard man at this point.[return to text]

6This idea was adapted from a passage in Luis Sepulveda's _The Old Man Who Read Love Stories_. (He's actually dying from COVID-19 at time of writing! So that's fun.) Even though the analogy didn't go where he wanted it to go, I like the idea of this being a hard, maybe damaging lesson for Kristoff to learn: that he IS still an outsider, even after the Trolls took him in as family. But that's what makes him so miraculous: that he was able to teach the Trolls about change, about how humans work, how love is so often bound up with grief, just by being him.[return to text]

7Something that I definitely wanted to recapture from the original fic is this idea of...effortless physicality between Anna and Kristoff, that even when they're not completely in-sync idea-wise, they're so used to being around each other that they can anticipate what the other person is going to do next without even thinking about it. I made sure to give Kristoff lots of little gestures, like that quick hand-bounce (Kristoff you're so _weird_ ), or even just looking at Anna in absent adoration, because in a way THAT'S what's soothing her rather than anything he says. Just the fact of his presence. And she's doing the same thing: moving in time with him, sitting still while he works with her hair and his words, little touches, and so on. I think this kind of unconscious reciprocality is inevitable whenever people are close, but it's especially pertinent for Anna and Kristoff, because they're so good at it, and so bad at saying words.[return to text]

8Here it is, folks: the dumbest thing I've had Kristoff say thus far. Sometime in and around Leah beta-reading "and yet the dream won't die" she made a casual comment--kind of an aside, really--that most of my fics in this recent period boil down to "character x has problem, have conversation, x progresses as person." I don't think she meant it as the vicious indictment of everything I stand for that I immediately took it as, but I took it to heart. I remain mostly interested in stories where these kids grow, but it's important to remind myself that growth is almost never linear, and stories shouldn't be just didactic situations that make characters Learn Something. Obviously this fic did in the end have Anna Learn Something, but I wanted to include this miscommunication-induced speed bump along the way. Kristoff shouldn't get to immediately succeed, especially if he's trying to be all metaphorical and deep.[return to text]

9The whole window thing was extrapolated from Elizabeth Wein's _Code Name Verity_ , which took it in turn from _Peter Pan_. I liked the idea of Anna playing Mrs. Darling because it's a double-layered metaphor that plays on Anna's strengths and weaknesses. On the strength side, it shows her determination to really make Arendelle--to make herself, really--a home for EVERYONE, to make up for past mistakes. It's an expansion of the open gates, because now anyone can come in, and stay. On the weakness side: Julie and Jamie's mum only plays Mrs. Darling because there's literally NOTHING else for her to do during the war--keeping the windows open in her children's bedrooms was her way of attempting to impose her will on the world, to make like her children will come back from the war safe and whole (and we know how that ended). And that's what Anna's worried about: becoming someone who can only stay and wait, who can only ever be the home that others return to.[return to text]

10I couldn't help but think about Rapunzel in her tower as I was writing this line. She doesn't have to just look; she can leave anytime.[return to text]

11At his heart, I think Kristoff is just as anxious as Anna, but he's had less opportunity to psychoanalyze himself and become self-aware of when he's anxious, so it manifests differently. As soon as he's uncomfortable, his brain ping-pongs him to a task--something that he can actually do or fix with his hands, because he knows that's what he's good at (he knows that's what he's good _for_ ). In the weeks leading up to his proposal plan, every nook and cranny of the castle somehow dusted themselves.[return to text]

12I had this weird obsession with kisses tasting "green" back when I was writing the original (I remember Leah having to talk me out of a similar description in "but sweet kisses i've got to spare"), even though logically I knew the obvious connotation was "grass," and no human wants to lick the lawn, no matter how nice it might smell when freshly cut. I think the allure of it was more along the lines of "evergreen"--as in, every time feeling awesome and new in some way. Kristoff's thinking along the same lines, here, but with a uniquely-Kristoff, "What Do You Know About Love" twist. He knows that he and Anna involve work, but in return he gets this.[return to text]

13Also up there in the list of Dumb Shit I Have Kristoff Say.[return to text]


End file.
